Martin Rees Quotes

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace.

Engineering is achieving function while avoiding failure.

I think it's good to have competition. Now we have a third country that can launch astronauts, so it's good for all of us. It makes us a little bit more competitive and wanting to be the leader.

Congress came to see NASA primarily as a jobs program, not an exploratory agency.

If we hadn't put a man on the moon, there wouldn't be a Silicon Valley today.

There was a lot of risk taken in the Mercury and Apollo eras, and we don't take those risks anymore. We've designed the systems to eliminate risk, which makes it take forever and cost too much money.

Spaceflight, especially in the Mercury spacecraft, clearly wasn't going to be much like flying an airplane.

You see countries like India really investing in their space program because they see it as inspirational and good for their economy.

I'm going to have to be impressed and feel confident in the people I'm handing a book to - or I'm not going to do it. Once you hand it to them, you're out. You have no control over it.

The way I see it, what is going to come out of the moon activities is a respect for U.S. leadership.

I'm actually a NASA brat. My father was a rocket scientist. He started working at NASA before it was NASA in 1959.

Science fiction was rocket-mad for about 40 years until aerospace hit a brick wall about 1970. I would not write off space colonisation or exploration completely, but we are profoundly ill adapted for going boldly into outer space.

You can never tell when a commercial space venture will suddenly become viable.

I wonder sometimes if manufacturers of foolproof items keep a fool or two on their payroll to test things.

At the end of October 4 in 1957, when I was coming back from sea duty in the South Pacific, Sputnik went up. I realized that humans would be right behind robot aircraft or spacecraft even though I really had no plans of being in aviation or a professional aviator and certainly not in the military.

The fact that the Virgin logo was on the side of SpaceShipOne on October 4th, 2004 was fantastic.

There's no doubt who was a leader in space after the Apollo Program. Nobody came close to us. And our education system, in science, technology, engineering and math, was at the top of the world. It's no longer there. We're descending rather rapidly.

In the astronaut business - the shuttle is a very complicated vehicle; it's the most complicated flying machine ever built. And in the astronaut business, we have a saying, which is, 'There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse.'

The next humans to walk on the moon may be Chinese. Only China seems to have the resources, the dirigiste government, and the willingness to undertake a risky Apollo-style programme. If Americans or Europeans venture to the moon and beyond, this will have to be in a very different style and with different motives.

National image ... prestige among other nations ... It was the main purpose of the civil space program.

NASA feeds the fuel of the technological furnace of America.

It appears that there are enormous differences of opinion as to the probability of a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life. The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management. What are the causes and consequences of this lack of agreement? Since 1 part in 100,000 would imply that one could put a Shuttle up each day for 300 years expecting to lose only one, we could properly ask "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery? .. It would appear that, for whatever purpose, be it for internal or external consumption, the management of NASA exaggerates the reliability of its product, to the point of fantasy.

People put themselves in difficult situations in lots of different areas. What you count on is people taking every precaution. The aerospace industry is unique in this aspect because a thousandths-of-an-inch mistake can cause spectacular failures.

It was hard for me to believe. I would look down and say, 'This is the moon, this is the moon,' and I would look up and say, 'That's the Earth, that's the Earth,' in my head. So, it was science fiction to us even as we were doing it.